09.29.12

Senator Carl Levin Goes After Microsoft for Avoiding Tax

Posted in Finance, Microsoft at 11:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Accounting

Summary: The accounting tricks of Microsoft attract some attention from Carl Levin, who is critical of the financial firms cartel in the US

Microsoft’s dodge from tax has been very apparent for a very long time, but almost no politician was willing to deal with this systemic and systematic corruption.

We are seeing signs of change as one outspoken (against financial misconduct) senator takes on Microsoft: “Microsoft has been accused of avoiding $6.5bn in taxes (over three years) by using a complex set of transactions with offshore subsidiaries located in Puerto Rico, Ireland, Singapore and Bermuda. The memo, issued by US Senator Carl Levin, did not accuse Microsoft of doing anything illegal, but simply put that they are using a loophole to domestic funds using non-traditional channels.”

The Microsoft boosters covered that as well: “A new report out by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that the software giant used subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland, Singapore and Bermuda to avoid more than $6.5 billion in taxes, Bloomberg News reports.”

Microsoft foes such as Pogson are happy about this development: “Well, it looks like the oh so loyal USA is being betrayed by M$. All those $billions in revenue reported to SEC are not pumping up the US economy after all. In fact, M$ is a drain on the US economy by charging monopoly prices at home and effectively giving the rest of the world a discount.”

Whether something will change is a separate matter and that remains to be seen. █

Microsoft Expected to be Fined for Disobeying European Orders

Posted in Antitrust, Europe, Microsoft at 11:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

“We’re giving away a pretty good browser as part of the operating system. How long can [Netscape] survive selling it?”

–Steve Ballmer

Flag of Europe

Summary: Microsoft is angering regulators at the European Commission and action is expected

The controversy over EU decisions is often a manufactured one. Microsoft PR creates it.

Browser choice in Europe did not go far enough in punishing the offender, Microsoft. But even the little which was demanded has not been fulfilled because Microsoft characteristically ignored orders: “Microsoft is reportedly set to be whacked with a Statement of Objections from European Commission competition officials over the software giant’s foolish browser-choice gaffe in which users of the Windows OS were steered into using the firm’s IE software.

“According to Bloomberg, which cited two anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the alleged antitrust breaches could lead to Microsoft being hit with yet more fines. This is even though the company attempted to forestall the damage by apologising for the cockup, which saw EU mandated browser-choice dialogues fail to appear on many Windows PCs sold in Europe in recent times.”

Another charge is reportedly on its way: “Microsoft Corp will be charged for failing to comply with a 2009 ruling ordering it to offer a choice of web browsers, the European Union’s antitrust chief said on Thursday, which could mean a hefty fine for the company.”

“Browser choice in Europe did not go far enough in punishing the offender, Microsoft.”Microsoft PR staff, boosters, and even former Microsoft employees downplayed EU fines before. This one person who quotes Microsoft talking points is doing it again. Without disclosure of past employment at Microsoft Zack Whittaker uses a news platform to bias the debate. Contrariwise, Pogson says that “M$ promised to offer users choice of browser but they broke their word, 28 million times. No fine is too large, EU Commission. Hammer them!”

Here is the original report and a complaint about Whittaker, accusing the publisher: “ZiffGatesNet sides with #Microsoft on story about #EU fine – repeats “error” excuse http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-faces-eu-fine-over-browser-choice-error-7000004723/?s_cid=e550″

Rex Djere says that operating systems and not just browsers are the issue: “We have to directly fund hardware manufacturers that make the open platforms that we want. GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Android etc. already provide the software openness; as soon as we introduce this same concept to hardware on a large scale, it won’t matter what Microsoft and other similar corporations do. Their closed systems will remain stationary on store shelves collecting dust.”

The FSF made a similar argument.

We covered the subject in posts such as:

  1. Cablegate: European Commission Worried About Microsoft’s Browser Ballot Screen Being Inappropriate
  2. Microsoft’s Browser Ballot is Broken Again and Internet Explorer 8 is Critically Flawed
  3. Microsoft’s Ballot Screen is a Farce, Decoy
  4. A Ballot Screen is Not Justice, Internet Explorer Still Compromises Users’ PCs
  5. Microsoft Not Only Broke the Law in Europe, So Browser Ballot Should Become International
  6. Browser Ballot Critique
  7. Microsoft’s Fake “Choice” Campaign is Back
  8. Microsoft Claimed to be Cheating in Web Browsers Ballot
  9. Microsoft Loses Impact in the Web Despite Unfair Ballot Placements
  10. Given Choice, Customers Reject Microsoft
  11. Microsoft is Still Cheating in Browser Ballot — Claim
  12. Microsoft Does Not Obey the Law

Will justice ever be restored? █

Microsoft Says Free Software Has No Copyrights

Posted in Africa, FUD, GPL, Microsoft at 11:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The latest FUD from Microsoft and some of those who attack Free software

Professor Moglen wrote about the case of a parasite versus Red Hat, noting that GPL violation is now being alleged by Red Hat: “Twin Peaks Software, Inc., which makes proprietary data replication and cloud storage software, sued Red Hat and its subsidiary Gluster for patent infringement back in February. Last week, Red Hat filed a counterclaim in that litigation, alleging copyright infringement by Twin Peaks in misappropriating GPL’d software.

“Red Hat’s counterclaim asserts that Twin Peaks has copied GPL’d code, from mount, into their proprietary mount.mfs utility, which is distributed to licensees of their data replication products. Red Hat holds copyright on most of the code in the relevant version of mount, which is part of the util-linux package.”

As put by another site, “Red Hat Says Twin Peaks In GPL Violation, Seeks Injunction”. As a reminder, it is copyright law that helps enforce the GPL. To quote the article: “If you remember, Red Hat was sued by a company called Twin Peaks over patent infringement. In its lawsuit filed in March 2012, Twin Peaks alleged that Red Hat and its newly acquired subsidiary Gluster infringed upon its U.S. Patent 7,418,439 Mirror file system. The patent was filed in 2001 and issued in 2008. According to the patent description, A mirror file systems (MFS) is a virtual file system that links two or more file systems together and mirrors between them in real time. Twin Peaks seek injunctions and damages for the alleged patents.”

So it is clear that the GPL finds copyright law a necessity, not wholly a nuisance. In that case, why does Microsoft continue to abuse the population of Kenya [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] by showering it with lies? Here is the latest lie: “Information Technology firms are warning of increased cyber-attack should the Government move to ditch copyrighted software.

“We expect Microsoft to play dirty and to lie as it always does in Kenya, based on what we saw.”The headline says “State warned on ditching copyrighted software”. To quote further: “Last week, the Government issued a warning that in the next three years it will move its IT operations to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), a move that will reduce cost by more than half in IT expenses.

“Microsoft said the move is risky and bound to make Government systems more vulnerable to hackers.

““We agree with the open standards but not the free and open source software strategy,” said Paul Roy Owino, technology advisor, Microsoft East and Southern Africa.”

We expect Microsoft to play dirty and to lie as it always does in Kenya, based on what we saw. █

09.28.12

Links 28/9/2012: GeeXboX 3.0, Distros Screenshots

Posted in News Roundup at 6:28 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

Free Software/Open Source

  • The Open Source Technology Behind Every Tweet

    SAN DIEGO. Twitter has become one of the most pervasive forms of real time social media interactions in recent years and it’s largely powered by open source technology. That’s the message coming that Chris Aniszcyzyk, the open source manager at Twitter, delivered today at the LinuxCon conference.

    Twitter’s infrastructure runs on open source technology using the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and the Scala programming language. Aniszcyzyk noted that Twitter was first built with the open source Ruby on Rails framework, but ended up moving away from Rails for performance reasons.

  • Diaspora’s move to community not the end

    Just over two years after their now-famous Kickstarter fundraiser that generated ten times the amount of funds they were seeking, the founders of Diaspora have announced they will shifting control of the project to the Diaspora community.

    Diaspora is one of the flashy success stories of the social media age. Conceived by four NYU students as an open source, distributed answer to Facebook, the project received a lot of media and hacker attention in 2010, just as the apex of concern for Facebook’s data privacy policies was being reached.

  • Diaspora Is Now Community Property: ‘It Was Never Supposed to Be a Startup’
  • Is Twitter open source-washing its image?

    Twitter seems to have a somewhat cynical approach on how to treat developers these days. The news that Twitter is joining the Linux Foundation comes just days after the microblogging company angered many in its development community with tighter restrictions on its APIs.

    The timing for joining the Linux Foundation seems rather suspect–observers have already called Twitter on trying to spin the negative response it received when the company announced the changes to version 1.1 of the Twitter API on August 16.

  • MapBox Aims For Open Source, Digital Map Revolution

    “What a crazy week,” said Eric Gundersen, CEO of MapBox, a cloud-based digital map publishing company, in an interview with TPM.

    Gundersen’s point is well taken, given his small 25-person startup, based in Washington, D.C., just won a $575,000 grant from the journalism innovation nonprofit the Knight Foundation.

  • Events

    • Open Source in Action: LinuxCon 2012

      I participated in a panel discussion at LinuxCon today with other journalists who cover Linux and open source goings-on, including our own Alex Williams. One of the questions that was asked was “What was the most important story for you this week?”

      The answers from my peer journalists were interesting, and reflect the diversity in interest (and beats) between us all. From Google’s admission to using — and paying for support for — Ubuntu on the desktop, to Linus’s revelation of a Linux 4.0 release within the next couple of years, the things that piqued our various interests covered the spectrum of what happened this week.

    • Linux Australia needs the LCA

      The Australian national Linux conference appears to be becoming a victim of its own success, with no team putting up a bid to host the event in 2014.

      But the sponsor, Linux Australia, has no choice but to keep finding an organising team – the conference serves as its main source of funds. Else, it would not be able to spread its wings as it has.

    • How Do You Define Open Source?

      It’s not as easy a question as you might think. For me, I used to (perhaps naively) believe that any license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) is open source. Those licenses are all supposed to conform to the Open Source Definition.

      Speaking at the LinuxCon conference, Red Hat lawyer Richard Fontana led an awesome session that really illuminated by view of the whole discussion.

    • LinuxCon 2012: OpenStack and Open Clouds
    • LinuxCon and the Promise of CloudOpen

      The fourth annual LinuxCon conference is getting underway this week here in Sunny San Diego. Over the last four years, LinuxCon USA has emerged as one of the preeminent Linux events on Earth, bringing together the best and brightest in a weeklong Linux love-in.

      LinuxCon filled the gap that was left behind after the collapse of LinuxWorld (remember that show?) as a vastly superior, technology focused show. The 2012 event by all indications will be another epic bonanza for Linux aficionados. While there have always been co-located conferences at LinuxCon, this year the Linux Foundation is co-locating its newest conference CloudOpen with LinuxCon.

    • ApacheCon Europe 2012 details announced

      The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced the speaker lineup and program for Apache Con Europe 2012 which is taking place 5 – 8 November at the Rhein-Neckar Arena in Sinsheim, Germany. According to the ASF, the conference is mostly targeted at “technologists currently developing Apache-based solutions, as well as those interested in committing code to an Apache project, contributing to the Apache Incubator, or enhancing their Open Source products and community practices.”

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Chrome for Android Is More Sticky Than Slick

        Pitched as a browser for searching and browsing fast, with accelerated page loading, adjectives like “quick” and “speed” gave me the impression I was in for a Web-based speed record. That was not to be the case. I experienced sticky page scrolling at the image-heavy CNN website compared to scrolling on the stock browser.

    • Mozilla

      • Ubuntu One Added to Thunderbird 15 Filelink

        Mozilla officially released the Mozilla Thunderbird 15.0 email and RSS client to the world on August 28th, 2012, bringing a few interesting new features.

      • Mozilla Delivers Beta of Its Persona Streamlined Sign-In Project

        The Mozilla Foundation is out with a public beta of Persona, a browser-centric system for logging in to online sites that could do away with managing lots of usernames and passwords. Mozilla has been working with the idea of Personas online for a long time, ranging from schemes to customize browser skins and the like to streamlining online log-in processes. Mozilla claims that the new public beta can do a lot to simplify online identities.

      • Firefox 15 Accelerates Browsing for Desktop, Phones and Tablets

        Mozilla has been waging a multi-year battle against memory bloat in its open source Firefox web browser. With today’s Firefox 15 release, Mozilla is firing a major salvo in that battle, claiming a reduction in memory usage.

        The memory reduction comes by way of plugging memory links in the way that third party add-ons consume memory.

        In a blog post detailing the memory fix, Mozilla developers estimated that the memory improvement could be as much as a 4.8x improvement over the previous Firefox 14 release.

      • Mozilla and National Science Foundation seek developers to build “apps from the future”

        Today, Mozilla and the National Science Foundation announced eight winning ideas that offer a glimpse of what the internet of the future might look like. Next up: invite developers everywhere to make these and other big ideas a reality.

  • SaaS

  • Databases

    • Open source MongoDB gets richer query commands

      In an effort to improve how MongoDB supplies its data to external applications, MongoDB keeper 10gen has extended the open source data store’s query language, providing developers with more sophisticated ways to extract and transform data.

    • Updates for PostgreSQL 9.1 and 9.2 fix critical bugs

      The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released updates to the 9.2.x and 9.1.x branches of its open source relational database. According to the project’s developers, these updates fix two critical bugs that could lead to potential data corruption and which were accidentally introduced “as a side effect of performance optimisations and new features, mainly Unlogged Tables”.

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle CIO: Linux is Fundamental

      Oracle CIO Mark Sunday has a lot of users he needs to support and he’s using Linux to do it. The tech leader took the stage at the LinuxCon conference this morning to discuss how Oracle uses and develops Linux.

      “Linux is our platform of choice across a wide variety of services,” Sunday said. “It is how we build products and how we provide services to our customers.”

      Oracle is a massive organization of over 125,000 employees spread across 49 countries and according to Sunday, they all depend on Linux. Linux is the core technology that powers Oracle’s core collaboration, including email and its primary systems.

    • Oracle woos open sourcers with free Java web framework
    • Oracle Claims MySQL IS Safe With Them

      If the accusation Oracle is incrementally withdrawing MySQL from open source is FUD, as an Oracle VP claimed this week, then it’s time for Oracle to take concrete steps to prove ‘open’ is their chosen path.

    • Larry couldn’t, but we can: Upstart Waratek touts cloudy Java love

      A startup has pledged to deliver for Java what the brains of Larry Ellison’s mighty Oracle and the entire Java community cannot: cloud scalability – now.

      It also hopes to spread the love to Java-hating sysadmins.

      Waratek is planning the general release of its Cloud VM for Java at JavaOne next week. The Cloud VM product is a virtualisation engine built by Waratek to deliver multi-tenancy and elasticity for Java apps. It will also release APIs that let you build for Cloud VM for Java at the event.

    • Oracle offers tiny tools for pint-sized Java devices

      Oracle has announced two new Java products for embedded systems, with the aim of getting the object-oriented language running on as wide a range of devices as possible, including ones with very limited resources.

      Tuesday’s new addition to the database giant’s Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) lineup, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 shrinks Java’s footprint down to levels that are almost unthinkable in the modern PC era. Derived from the version of Java ME that runs on feature phones, it supports devices with ARM processors and as little as 130KB RAM and 350KB ROM.

  • CMS

    • Drupal at Warp Speed

      Doesn’t it give you a warm feeling when you’re asked to do a week’s work in twelve hours or less? It should. It should give you a warmer feeling when you can do it in far less time. Give your C-Level suitors this one in under an hour and they’ll think you’re as magical as Mr. Scott aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Mr. Scott often surprised the always demanding Captain Kirk with his ability to fix just about anything within the very tight time constraints placed on him. Instead of dilithium crystals and altered phaser electronics, you’ll have to work with Ubuntu and Drupal.

    • WordPress for Android updated with all-new stats

      Support for featured images and all-new stats are the most notable features in the recent 2.2 release of the WordPress for Android mobile application. This new version now lets users set Featured Images from directly within the app; previously this could only be done using the web interface. After adding an image to the post, users can enable this option by tapping on it and selecting “Use as featured image”; the developers note that this requires WordPress 3.4.1 or later.

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • GCC 4.5 Through 4.8 For AMD’s Bulldozer

      While the new AMD Trinity APUs are what’s exciting and being benchmarked at the moment, here are some updated compiler tests from earlier this month on an AMD FX-8150 Bulldozer system.

  • Project Releases

  • Public Services/Government

  • Openness/Sharing

    • A tour through open source creative tools
    • Keep calm and innersource on

      Winston Churchill was known as a charismatic leader and statesman, able to rally his country to great things when they needed it most. He was also fond of the occasional salty outburst when needed—I won’t repeat one of his more famous ones here, except to paraphrase it a bit…

    • Is open source democratic?

      In his recent post, Glyn Moody asks an important question: “Can open source be democratic?” He describes how free software emerged as a distributed, bottom-up system of writing code. The central defining aspects of that culture are a uniquely open process not just of programming but also of its organization, and a close relationship between programmers and users. Effectively, users and programmers together were both contributors, they collaborated on the project. Glyn goes on to explain how this community effort changed over time to become more institutionalized, more corporate and more dull—”becoming a ‘Firefox Affiliate’, hardly something that sets the pulse racing.” Ordinary users no longer play an important part in open source projects.

    • Open Hardware

      • Open source hardware answers the problem of mobile device obsolescence

        Perhaps you read my, “No iOS 6 for my original iPad? Now, I’m an Angry Bird” post that describes, in detail, my irritation with Apple for no longer supporting my iPad 1. If you haven’t, you should so that you’ll understand this post. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish before I continue.

        Now, that you’re back, I’ve come up with a solution to this overt obsolescence dilemma facing tens of millions of disappointed customers–not only from Apple but from other companies as well. Just read the comments from the original post and you’ll see that we all face this, “Buy our newest stuff” marketing ploy regardless of your device source.

  • Programming

    • Should we require that open source is developed openly?

      Of course I went out to re-read both the open source and free software definitions so I could prove him wrong…but I can’t. He is right, the definitions of both free software and open source software say nothing about being developed in the open, but as those of you who have attended one of my workshops (or read my book) know, I disagree.

    • Python Development on Linux and Why You Should Too
    • Open source Java projects: GitHub

      If you’ve been curious about GitHub then this short tutorial in the Open source Java projects series is for you. Get an overview of the source code repository that has changed the way that many developers work, both individually and collaboratively. Then try GitHub for yourself, using common Git commands to branch and commit your own open source project.

    • Open Source Programs Aim to Meet Global Demand for Developers

      I recently wrote that to master technology, you must master software. It is software that differentiates one device or computing experience from another. And since nearly all software today is built using open source projects and code, knowing how to collaborate and contribute to an open development community is a requirement for any developer or company regardless of industry.

    • Google launches its third junior Code-in event

      Stephanie Taylor from Google’s Open Source Programs Office has announced the launch of the company’s third Code-in contest for pre-university students. The annual event is open to students aged 13 to 17 from around the world and is designed to introduce them to open source software development.

  • Standards/Consortia

    • HTML5 to be completed by the end of 2014

      The chairs of the W3C’s HTML Working Group have presented a plan to approve a stable HTML5 specification before the end of 2014. The plan proposes to formally define a stable set of features as HTML 5.0, but when the HTML Working Group will approve this plan is as yet unknown. Features for which no stable specification is available by then could be moved to an extended “HTML 5.1″ set of features that could be completed by 2016.

Leftovers

Links 28/9/2012: NVIDIA 304.51 Linux Graphics Driver, ZaReason Tablet

Posted in News Roundup at 6:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

GNOME bluefish

Contents

GNU/Linux

  • Linux: It’s Where the Jobs Are

    The U.S. unemployment rate is slowly getting better, thank goodness. But with the unemployment rate at 8.3%, few people are saying the great recession is over.

  • PC-in-a-Keyboard Comes with Ubuntu Linux Preloaded

    The past six months or so have seen a veritable flurry of tiny, Linux-powered PCs descend upon the market, including not just the widely embraced Raspberry Pi but also the Mele A1000, the MK802, and the Oval Elephant, to name just a few.

  • Vandals break into congressman’s office, install Linux on PCs

    A US congressmen has been left incensed after miscreants installed Linux on computers at his campaign office, possibly thrashing some data in the process.

    Michael Grimm, a Republican who represents a district in New York covering Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has slammed the weekend break-in to his offices on as a “politically motivated” crime against the democratic process.

  • How I Saved a Mac Using Ubuntu

    As a general rule, OS X is not really best buddies with its Linux distribution cousins.

    The reasons vary, depending on who you ask. But at the end of the day, the division is a solid one. Still, it is worth mentioning that since today’s Mac runs with an Intel CPU, most Linux distributions run great on it.

    As luck would have it, the Mac’s compatibility with Linux recently saved my bacon after my wife’s iMac went into a bit of a meltdown.

    This is a walk-through detailing how Ubuntu 12.04 saved my wife’s Mac (data).

  • Linux and the Samsung Series 9 NP900X3C
  • ‘Cotton Candy’ Linux PC-on-a-stick ships at last

    There’s been a seemingly endless parade of tiny, Linux-powered PCs entering the market in recent months, including most recently the $49 Cubieboard and the $89 UG802.

  • Linux Top 3: Linux 4.0, Leadership and Goobuntu

  • Desktop

    • Future of the Desktop

      Could Mozilla’s announcement of the Boot to Gecko roadmap, along with the continued development of other web-based operating systems, make which Linux distro you’re running less important than the desktop environment?

    • In a Retail Competition in Portugal for Notebooks, GNU/Linux Won 10% Share

      All this talk of GNU/Linux not making it on the desktop is hypothetical. Where GNU/Linux was tried it has done well. In Portugal, some locally-built PCs were produced in several models. One of them had GNU/Linux and because of that had a lower price for software and better hardware. The result? It earned a decent share of the market, 10%. So, the fools who proclaim GNU/Linux has only 1% share due to geeks miss the effect of barring GNU/Linux from retail shelves, something totally on the supply-side. Consumers will choose GNU/Linux if it is offered.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

  • Kernel Space

    • Fragmentation Of The Ext4 File System In Ubuntu

      “Data in the computer is stored in files that are written on the hard disk which is like a giant closet with millions of drawers and each drawer has the same capacity (usually 512 bytes). If the data is stored in contiguous drawers, it can be accessed faster than if it was in a discontinuous (fragmented) order into the closet. So far, it is understood that “things” can be found faster in an ordered closet than in a messy one. The problem is to know how to keep the closet organized when it is frequently used.”

    • Graphics Stack

  • Applications

  • Desktop Environments

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • KDE Needs You: Make Randa 2012 Happen

        KDE is one such project which is purely driven by a community which believes in free software, which believes in giving complete control of the system to its users.

        I recently switched to KDE and am really impressed with the work developers have done on it. These developers don’t have magic wand or heavy corporate backing to create what you and I use every day. These mortals work with each other to create one of the oldest desktop environments (KDE was founded in 1996, Gnome/Xfce in 1997), they mostly community through the web, but nothing can match face-to-face real world interaction where these developers meet with each other and discuss various aspects of KDE.

      • Can KDE’s Plasma Active Run On Android?

        Initially the idea was to get all the source code for the software running on one of the many tablets which are sold with Android. But the idea faced problems because only binary drivers are provided by the vendors which are useless for Mer.

        Even if enough source code

    • GNOME Desktop

      • Cinnamon 1.6 nearing feature freeze

        The next major update to the Cinnamon desktop environment is nearing its feature freeze and is well on its way to a release. In a blog post, Linux Mint founder and lead developer Clement “Clem” Lefebvre says that the development team is “extremely active” working towards the next 1.6.0 release of Cinnamon and he provides various details of the current state of development, including a list of planned features.

      • GNOME 3.6 Released – See What’s New

        The GNOME Project has released GNOME 3.6 today, the new version bringing many enhancements and new features, including a redesigned Message Tray, smarter notifications, improved Activity Overview layout, new design for Files (Nautilus) and a new lock screen. Let’s take a look at what’s new!

  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mageia Linux: A Delightful OS for Work or Play

        Mageia Linux is a distro brought to you by the same people who previously produced Mandriva Linux. The new distro, first released in September 2010, provides an easy to use environment for Linux newcomers or experts. It is particularly suited for game play and works well with various processors, sound and graphics cards.

      • Cotton Candy Tiny Linux PC Joins a Crowd of Them

        While the Raspberry Pi has grabbed the most headlines as a tiny, ultra-inexpensive, pocketable computer running an open source operating system, it’s actually only one of many tiny LInux computers being heralded as part of a new “Linux punk ethic.” As we’ve noted, there are various pocket-size Android devices selling online for under $100 (see the photo). For example, these thumbdrive-style mini PCs are available on AliExpress for $74, which includes shipping. Now, some of the most talked about Linux PCs-on-a-stick are shipping: the “Cotton Candy” devices.

    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Stock Down 3% After Earnings, Forecast Miss

        Shares of enterprise software maker Red Hat (RHT) dipped 3.3% in midday trading on Tuesday, after the company late Monday reported a mixed bag of financial results.

      • Red Hat Cloud Exec Scott Crenshaw Joins Acronis
      • Red Hat Price Target Raised to $58.00 at Goldman Sachs (RHT)

        Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) had its price target upped by Goldman Sachs to $58.00 in a research report sent to investors on Tuesday morning.

      • Infor open-source plan: Embrace Red Hat stack, MySQL

        Infor has certified some of its products for Red Hat’s Linux and JBoss middleware and added support for the MySQL and MariaDB databases, as part of a new push into open-source software, the companies announced Wednesday.

      • Fedora

        • Is Fedora Linux Becoming Business-Friendly?

          Fedora Linux has not typically been closely associated with the business world. That realm was instead the purview of Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), which sponsors Fedora as a community project and uses it as a proving ground for technologies that often later appear in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. But if the upcoming release of Fedora 18 is any indication, the open source operating system may be poised to become more business friendly in its own right.

        • Pimp up XFCE 4.10 in Fedora 17

          The default look of the XFCE desktop in Fedora 17, is a little boring, but this post, show how to pimp it up to look really great.

          I started with a standard XFCE 4.8 Fedora installation and upgraded to XFCE 4.10.

    • Debian Family

      • Derivatives

        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Canonical loses Ubuntu marketing exec to Mozilla Firefox OS project

            John Bernard, the marketing manager for Canonical’s OEM unit, will be leaving his position at the end of this week in order to move across to Mozilla’s mobile Firefox OS unit.

            A Canonical spokeswoman confirmed Bernard’s decision to change roles in a statement on Tuesday.

          • Get Ready For The 24-Hour Horsemen Marathon

            See that motley crew above? That is my team, the Community Team at Canonical. I am blessed to have such a wonderful team; not only are they all fantastic community leaders, but they are just a fun bunch of guys in general to be around.

          • Ubuntu Unity Aims For More Affiliate Revenue
          • Canonical Ubuntu management tool gets hefty upgrade

            “We have really been cranking up the level of effort with Landscape over the past year or so,” said Federico Lucifredi, Canonical’s Landscape product manager. “Landscape is a very important piece of our enterprise strategy, and so Canonical’s commitment has increased dramatically.”

          • Canonical Debuts Ubuntu One Music Store for the Web
          • Ubuntu One Music Store comes to mobile and web, skips the plugins
          • Ubuntu One Music Store Goes Online: Free Access For 6 Months
          • Ubuntu 12.10 to Support Remote Desktop Login

            As an operating system that proclaims itself “cloud ready,” Ubuntu ought to make it as easy as possible to log in to remote PCs and servers from the Ubuntu desktop. And that’s just what users will be able to do in Ubuntu 12.10, which will feature a remote login feature in the greeter screen. Read on for a look.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 1: Preview
          • First beta of Ubuntu 12.10 released

            The first beta version of Ubuntu 12.10, code-named “Quantal Quetzal”, has been released for testing ahead of its October final release. The new version brings together a range of enhancements the developers have been working on, from reducing the number of install images, to making 3D accelerated desktops run on non-3D hardware, and switching to Python 3.0.

          • Edgy penguins test-fly Ubuntu’s Quantal Quetzal
          • Canonical Targets Corporate Desktops for Ubuntu

            You’ve probably heard the promises that desktop Linux is more secure, faster and cost-effective than proprietary platforms. But did you know it can also increase employee satisfaction? So says Canonical in its latest effort to promote Ubuntu in the workplace. Read on for a look at this and other talking points.

            Admittedly, the suggestion that installing Ubuntu on your business’s workstations “will actively improve the efficiency and job satisfaction of employees” is only one of the many reasons Canonical gives for switching to Ubuntu. And Canonical doesn’t discuss the claim in detail. That claim, by the way, came in an email announcing the availability of a white paper from Canonical titled, “Ubuntu Desktop for the Enterprise.”

          • Ubuntu Gnome Remix 12.10 Arrives For Testing 175
          • First alpha of Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

            The developers of the GNOME desktop-based Ubuntu derivative have, under the name Ubuntu GNOME Remix, released their first alpha version of the distribution. Based on the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 “Quantal Quetzal” release, the developers describe the Remix as a developer snapshot to “give a very early glance at the next version”.

          • Fans Create Ubuntu Gangnam Style Cover
          • Ubuntu 12.10 adds Photo Lens for searching photos stored locally and online
          • Canonical aligns Ubuntu Server with quick-change OpenStack

            Canonical, the distributor of the Ubuntu variant of Linux, wants to be on the cutting edge and be stable at the same time. And as anyone who has dated knows, that is a tough balancing act that few people can manage. But a new strategy from Canonical will line up the fast-changing OpenStack cloud control freak that is part of the latest Ubuntu Server distribution with the Long Term Support stable version of the company’s Linux.

          • Ubuntu offering 20GB cloud storage, 6 months music streaming for 70p
          • Pre-release Ubuntu 12.10 has partial support for manual LVM and disk encryption

            About three weeks ago, I published automated LVM and disk encryption in a pre-release version of what will become Ubuntu 12.10, aka Quantal Quetzal.

          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 284
          • 12.04 Music Player Review – CPU Usage
          • 5 Best Free Apps For Ubuntu 12.04 – Part 1

            We have shared a wonderful post on few must have apps for Ubuntu 12.04 and I would like to extend that list the below post. Before I get into this post, best free apps for Ubuntu 12.04, I would like you check the previously linked post.

          • Desktop Dis-Unity: Ubuntu Adds Web-Search to the Desktop

            The Linux desktop has always been a balancing act between convenience on the one hand and security and privacy on the other. However, Ubuntu’s recent decision to add results from Amazon to desktop searches creates such an imbalance that I wonder just whose convenience is being considered — Ubuntu’s, or the users’?

          • I Feared Uncertain Doubt
          • Ubuntu, Dash and Amazon – Great news?

            I’ve been reading with interest the issues raised by some over the recent news that Dash search results in Ubuntu 12.10 are to include searches with Amazon. As with any new announcement (and in particular with a big name distro such as Ubuntu) feelings are strong. ”It’s the end of the world”, “Canonical have shot themselves in the foot” and a cacophony of cries proclaiming the end of the world. The reality is somewhat different, but then especially with the more vocal names on the net, why let reality ruin a good end of the world story?

          • [Full circle] issue 65
          • Canonical adds a ‘kill switch’ for Ubuntu’s Amazon search

            The new integration of Amazon search results in Ubuntu Linux 12.10 has stirred up quite a hornet’s nest of controversy over the past week or so among observers unimpressed by Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth’s calm assurances that users’ privacy would be maintained.

          • Ubuntu 12.10 Beta 2: Preview

            GNOME and Windows 8 developments have resulted in some controversial changes for Ubuntu 12.10 (codenamed Quantal Quetzal), which has now reached the Beta 2 stage. Fortunately, solutions now seem to be in place in time for the 18 October release to proceed as scheduled. Canonical has generated further controversy by introducing online scope results, specifically from Amazon, into the Dash search.

          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint 13 Maya review

              With Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as its underpinnings, Linux Mint 13 (Maya) was recently released in three versions, KDE (new), Xfce, and Gnome-Cinnamon. We tested each version separately and while we still like Mint, we’re accumulating a nagging list of bugs – some of which are the fault of Ubuntu, and some are the twists that Linux Mint takes on its own.

            • Explaining Linux Mint 13

              Ubuntu’s reign on Linux desktop dominance may soon be under threat with two new releases from Mint, but far from simply being a different take on a user-friendly desktop, the new Mint 13 is important because it diverges dramatically from Ubuntu, upon which it’s based. And it does so because it’s challenging the very direction Ubuntu is taking.

            • Ubuntu Studio: A Distro for Recording
            • Peppermint OS Three: between the cloud and the desktop

              The cloud era is coming. Some people can argue whether this is good or bad. Maybe that’s only the fashion. Maybe not. Although more and more people think of the cloud as if it were the inevitable future.

            • What’s on tap in Zentyal 3?

              Zentyal is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu Server. The current stable edition is Zentyal 2.2, with Zentyal 3 as the next stable version. Unlike other distributions that release at least two versions per year, Zentyal takes a less rapid-fire development model, releasing only one stable version per year.

            • Introducing Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10

              We are proud to announce today, September 3rd, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Alpha release of the upcoming Ubuntu GNOME Remix 12.10 operating system.

            • Linux Mint 13 – Everybody’s best mate?

              I had Linux Mint 12 installed on my laptop for quite a while but I was never settled with it. The reason for this was the choice of desktop.
              The Samsung R20 laptop does not seem to handle the Cinnamon desktop at all well and the Gnome classic desktop was just a bit rigid.

              I therefore had wanted to use the Mate desktop. The trouble was that panels kept disappearing and once they had disappeared it was a real hassle to get them to come back again.

  • Devices/Embedded

    • Phones

      • Linux-based Tizen mobile platform LIVES!

        The Linux Foundation has released the source code and SDKs for the first alpha version of Tizen 2.0, its Linux-based smartphone OS, further fueling speculation that Samsung might be close to releasing a handset based on the platform.

        You could be forgiven for assuming Tizen was dead in the water – if you’ve heard of it at all. It’s a combination of Nokia’s Maemo, Intel’s Moblin, and the two companies’ joint MeeGo project, none of which enjoyed any market success. We’ve heard nary a peep about it here at El Reg since the Linux Foundation announced it last September, and no phones running the OS are available commercially.

      • Software release suggests Samsung could soon launch a smartphone running Tizen

        Tizen 2.0, the open-source smartphone operating system, is now available as an alpha release with an accompanying Software Development Kit (SDK), the Tizen project announced on Tuesday. The release lends credence to rumors that project member Samsung Electronics is planning to launch a version of its Galaxy S3 smartphone running Tizen instead of Google’s Android.

      • Huawei sees smartphones leading growth in consumer devices

        Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world’s sixth-biggest maker of mobile phones, is looking to its smartphones to outpace global growth rates and drive a consumer gadgets business that will rival its flagship telecoms gear in revenue.

        [...]

        “Whatever consumers like, we’ll develop,” Wan Biao, CEO of Huawei Device, said in an interview on Monday at the company’s headquarters. “We’re also devoting resources into coming up with a phone operating system based on our current platform in case other companies won’t let us use their system one day.”

      • Ballnux

      • Android

    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • KDE Tablet Vivaldi Launch Delayed

        The launch of the KDE tablet Vivaldi has been postponed for now, following major setback. The project received a severe blow after the manufacturer of originally chosen Zenithink C71 tablet modified the system board of the device. This means that the numerous adjustments that were made to the Linux kernel to support the previous board have all gone waste and the developers now have to start the development work from scratch.

      • ZaTab: ZaReason’s Open Tablet

        Quite a few options exist as far as Android tablets go. Some of them are great choices for personal entertainment and media consumption. Google’s new Nexus 7 is a powerful little beast designed to serve up media from Google Play. Amazon’s Kindle Fire is a great device for tapping Amazon’s extensive content offerings. Undoubtedly, these tablets were designed to direct more of your money to the tablet-maker’s on-line content marketplaces. The glaring lack of SD card expansion on these devices confirms this. The ZaReason team designed a tablet that can be what the user wants it to be—one that supports users’ own content, that is not necessarily tied to a particular content store and that can be used as far more than a simple consumption device. Have they succeeded in creating the world’s first open tablet? Let’s find out.

      • Acer introduces 7-inch Iconia Tab A110

Free Software/Open Source

  • Diaspora slowly becoming a community-run project, but is it too late?

    We’ve followed Diaspora for a while now, since its beginning when it was the largest project Kickstarter had seen and was being called “the Facebook killer.” Two years later, the “open source social network” is becoming more open by turning into a community-run project, and the Diaspora team is launching a new project, Makr.io

  • By the numbers: India saves and grows with free and open source software

    Free and open source software (FOSS) plays an indispensable role in developing countries. As it is often a substitute for more expensive proprietary software, it can impact the economy and progress of a country, like India, in a very positive way.

  • Marketing open source is made for geeks

    Up until about ten years ago, it was extremely unfashionable to be a geek. Geeks were considered the black swans of the social world: they were perceived as having limited social skills, little interest in non-programming activities, and few friends.

    Fast forward to today, and things have changed significantly for the geek. Geeks today run the coolest companies, create the most cutting-edge trends, and are popular guests on the social circuit. And as the geek has evolved, so too has his or her skills: today’s geeks are not just clever programmers, but they also know how to finance and market their products.

  • Open Sourcer miffed by Raspberry Pi

    There are moments when Open Source religion gets in the way of a jolly good thing. Raspberry released a cut price computer with Linux on board to help kids learn programming. What could be wrong with that?

    Everything, according to Peter Zotov, who is a noted Open Source developer. Writing in White Quark, Zotov damns the Pi for not obeying the rules of true Open Source and therefore ruling it out for education purposes.

    He said that kids will not understand the reality of computing because the Pi is “a black box tightly sealed with patents and protected by corporations. It isn’t even remotely an open platform,” he wails. Apparently kids can only learn programming if everything is completely open source, true and pure as God, or Richard Stallman, intended.

  • GNU Octave: An interview with John W. Eaton and Jordi Gutiérrez

    [John] I’m the original author of GNU Octave and have been it’s maintainer from the beginning, in 1992. When I first started working on Octave I was post-doctoral researcher and systems administrator at the University of Texas. Then from 1995 until 2008 I was a researcher at the University of Wisconsin. But most of my time from 1992 until 2008 was spent working on Octave. Now I have my own software support company focused on supporting Octave.

  • Gotye’s YouTube Orchestra Remix: The Sweetness Of The Open Source Pop Star

    In 2009, an artist named Kutiman launched a project called Thru-YOU (a play on YouTube) that aimed to show what open collaboration could be on the internet. He played the “YouTube Orchestra” for a series of video remixes that made the network effects of music video on the web powerfully clear.

  • Web Browsers

    • Chrome

      • Experience Movi.Kati.Revo, A New Chrome Experiment

        At Google I/O earlier this year, developers were given a glimpse of Movi.Kanti.revo, a new sensory Chrome experiment designed by Cirque du Soleil and developed by Subatomic Systems. For people who are not acquainted with Cirque du Soleil, it is a Canadian entertainment company, whose performances are described as a dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment.

      • Chrome 22 Out In Stable Version, Includes Gaming Enhancements

        Google has released Chrome 22 in a final, stable version as the browser continues to grab substantial global market share. The release includes improvements for gamers, JavaScript performance enhancements, support for new, high-definition screens and more. Also this week, Google released a new version of Chrome for iOS that supports the iPhone 5. Here is more on what to expect in Chrome 22.

        Chrome 22 is available now as a download for Windows, the Mac and Linux. As noted on eWeek:

      • Google Releases Chrome 22 Stable for Linux

        On September 25th, Google has unleashed the stable and final release of the Google Chrome 22 web browser, supporting the Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Chrome Frame platforms.

      • Microsoft dismisses Google’s open source browser benchmark

    • Mozilla

      • Mozilla measures interest in their open source projects using site metrics

        David Boswell has a couple of interesting posts (here and here) about how he is using metrics to measure how effective Mozilla is at attracting and engaging people who express an interest in helping contribute to the Mozilla mission.

      • Mozilla and National Science Foundation Honor Eight “Ignite” Concepts

        Back in June, the Obama administration along with The National Science Foundation and Mozilla unveiled Ignite, “an initiative to promote US leadership in developing applications and services for ultra-fast broadband and software-defined networks.” The initiative was described as an incubator ecosystem that will hook people up with novel technology ideas with fast networks, advanced infrastructure and more. Mozilla said the program would identify developers who can “build apps for the future.”

        Now Mozilla and The National Science Foundation have announced eight winners in the program, with ideas that “offer a glimpse of what the Internet of the future might look like.”

        You can find out more about the winning projects here. They include an innovative open source web conferencing app and a 3D interactive telepresence application. The competition features $485,000 in prize money, and here are the initial eight winning concepts:

      • Mozilla shares an in-depth look at the design philosophy behind Firefox OS

        Additionally, Mozilla showed off its homescreen, app grid, and lock screen, which feels like a nice mashup of WebOS and Android, while some of its built-in apps share a small bit of iOS’ skeuomorphic tendencies while being much more elegant and less gaudy. Overall, it’s a handsome-looking OS that appears to have had a lot of thought put into it long before a phone would be available in consumers hands — we imagine that it won’t need to go through the same major visual revisions that Android did over the years.

      • MOZILLA Y U HATE RSS?!?
      • Mozilla Fails to Bring Firefox Home on iOS

        Back in 2010, Mozilla’s was all over the place promoting the open source browser vendor effort to sync Firefox on Apple iOS devices.

        I first wrote about Firefox Home in May of 2010, then again in July 2010 when the App officially debuted.

        Now, two years later, Mozilla is throwing in the towel, giving up on Firefox Home.

      • 3 Hidden Features In Firefox 15 You May Want To Enable

        Firefox 15, which has been released a few days ago, comes with some cool features disabled by default: native PDF viewer, preferences in tab and click-to-play plugins.

        These features have been in testing for quite a while, but they are not 100% ready so they aren’t enabled by default and there are no options in the Firefox preferences to enable them. But, if you don’t mind an occasional glitch, you can enable them using the about:config tool.

      • SolusOS 1.2 Legacy Features Firefox 15

        Ikey Doherty proudly announced yesterday, September 2nd, the immediate availability for download of Legacy Edition of his SolusOS 1.2 Linux operating system.

  • SaaS

  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • LibreOffice Community announces broad program for its Berlin conference

      Tracks on development, marketing, migration and community success
      The Document Foundation to host official ODF Plugfest and ODF Plugtesting

    • New Document Foundation Committee Members Chosen

      The Document Foundation Membership Committee administers membership applications and renewals. This is an important job because without them, LibreOffice wouldn’t get new contributers. The Document Foundation recently announced the results of the Membership Committee election.

    • The Document Foundation Turns Two

      Has it been two years already? Apparently so, because today Italo Vignoli posted to The Document Foundation mailing list, “The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage.” They’ve come a long way in just two short years.

    • Review: VMware Workstation 9 vs. VirtualBox 4.2

      When it comes to virtualization on the desktop, two products stand front and center: VMware Workstation and VirtualBox. The former is the long-standing original keeper of the flame, from the company that gave us PC-centric virtualization technology as we know it. The latter is an open source project now under the stewardship of Oracle, with its own strongly competitive set of features.

    • The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary and starts fundraising campaign to reach the next stage

      Berlin, September 28, 2012 – The Document Foundation celebrates its second anniversary since the announcement of the project on September 28, 2010. During the last 12 months, the foundation was legally established in Berlin, the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee were elected by TDF members, where membership is based on meritocracy and not on invitation, Intel became a supporter, and LibreOffice 3.5 and 3.6 families were announced. In addition, TDF has shown the prototypes of a cloud and a tablet version of LibreOffice, which will be available sometime in late 2013 or early 2014.

  • CMS

  • Funding

  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Project Releases

    • ACE Code Editor Version 1.0 Released

      ACE is an open source embeddable code editor. The developers have just launched version 1.0 of ACE along with their new website. ACE is written in Javascript, its features and performance is claimed to match that of native editors such as Sublime, Vim and TextMate. It can be easily embedded in a webpage or Javascript application. It supports syntax highlighting for more than 40 languages and can handle documents with up to 4 million lines of code.

    • GStreamer 1.0 out now

      Upgrade to the latest version of GStreamer now for bug fixes and plenty of new optimization tweaks

    • W3C Announces Plan to Make HTML5 Standard By 2014
    • GStreamer 1.0 out now

      Upgrade to the latest version of GStreamer now for bug fixes and plenty of new optimization tweaks

  • Public Services/Government

    • French Government Urged to Adopt Open Source

      French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has issued a missive to French ministers, including a complete action plan urging government usage of LibreOffice and PostgreSQL. But the action plan calls for more. As noted on Slashdot: “He also wants them to reinvest between 5 percent and 10 percent of the money they save through not paying for proprietary software licenses, spending it instead on contributing to the development of the free software. The administration already submits patches and bug fixes for the applications it uses, but Ayrault wants to go beyond that, contributing to or paying for the addition of new functionality to the software.” This is just the latest example of strong pushes in the direction of open source going on in Europe.

    • French government to use PostgreSQL and LibreOffice in free software adoption push

      French government agencies could become more active participants in free software projects, under an action plan sent by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in a letter to ministers, while software giants Microsoft and Oracle might lose out as the government pushes free software such as LibreOffice or PostgreSQL in some areas.

    • A time for change: Citizens empowered by open government

      Do you see government as an institution without much room for growth and change? The open source way is creating a path for citizens to become empowered and help their community make improvements where traditional methods have failed—through active participation, gained knowledge, and a two-way conversation with city officials.

    • Can citizens use open source to create legislation?
    • French Government Outlines Plans for Free Software Adoption

  • Openness/Sharing

    • Open Access/Content

      • California Passes Nation’s First Open Source Textbook Legislation

        Only a signature away, Governor Jerry Brown will have an opportunity to lower the cost of college textbooks by creating the nation’s first free open source digital library for college students and faculty.

        Friday, the California State Senate unanimously passed the first of its kind open educational resource digital library, or (OER), offering students free access to textbooks in the most commonly taken lower-division courses at public postsecondary institutions.

    • Open Hardware

  • Standards/Consortia

Leftovers

  • Finance

    • Wall Street Rolling Back Another Key Piece of Financial Reform

      Wall Street lobbyists are awesome. I’m beginning to develop a begrudging respect not just for their body of work as a whole, but also for their sense of humor. They always go right to the edge of outrageous, and then wittily take one baby-step beyond it. And they did so again last night, with the passage of a new House bill (HR 2827), which rolls back a portion of Dodd-Frank designed to protect cities and towns from the next Jefferson County disaster.

    • SEC Charges Goldman Sachs, Former Banker With ‘Pay-to-Play’ Violations

      The SEC announced today that it has filed a “pay-to-play” case against Goldman, Sachs & Co. and one of its former investment bankers. The SEC alleges that Goldman and Neil M.M. Morrison, a former vice president in the firm’s Boston office, made undisclosed campaign contributions to then-Massachusetts state treasurer Timothy P. Cahill while he was a candidate for governor.

  • Censorship

    • Brazil judge orders arrest of Google president

      A Brazilian judge ordered the arrest of the head of Google’s operations in Brazil for failure to remove YouTube videos that attacked a mayoral candidate, which runs counter to the South American nation’s strict pre-vote electoral laws.

  • Privacy

  • Civil Rights

    • US calls Assange ‘enemy of state’

      THE US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States – the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.

      Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with “communicating with the enemy”, a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.

09.27.12

Europe and New Zealand Share a Software Patents Problem As Such

Posted in Europe, GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft, Patents at 12:23 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Patent law in New Zealand and in Europe starts showing some resemblance, with similar loopholes being put in place

THE patent law in New Zealand (NZ) has been subverted to enable granting of software patents.

“IBM and Microsoft successfully rewrote NZ software patent law,” says the FFII’s president, Benjamin Henrion, quoting a source about “replacing an exclusion in clause 15(3A) (which relates to computer programs) with new clause 10A. Rather than excluding a computer program from being a patentable invention, new clause 10A clarifies that a computer program is not an invention for the purposes of the
Bill (and that this prevents anything from being an invention only to the extent that a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such). This approach is considered to be more consistent
with New Zealand’s international obligations (the TRIPS agreement, in particular, contains restrictions on the ability to exclude inventions from patentability). This approach is also more consistent with
overseas precedents and makes it clear that it is only computer programs themselves that are ineligible for patent protection. Under the Bill, a patent may still be granted for an invention that meets all of the criteria for patentability (for example, novelty and an inventive step) despite the fact that the relevant invention involves a computer program in some respect…”

“This is a real shame,” he noted.

Here is further commentary on it: “Last week we reported the last minute backtrack by the New Zealand government, deleting a controversial provision in its new Patents Bill stating that ‘a computer program is not a patentable invention’, and replacing it with a controversial provision which still says that ‘a computer program is not an invention’, but only to the extent that it is ‘a computer program as such’. (See NZ Government Backtracks – to Europe – on Software Patents.)

“The basic idea behind this change is to import about 30 years of European and UK jurisprudence on what it means for something to be a computer program ‘as such’, in the expectation that this will allow – amongst other things – inventions implemented using embedded software systems to be patented.”

Clare Curran responded to this abomination in NZ. Prior to it, wrote the FFII’s president: “Patent law in New Zealand will be voted tomorrow, with or without the as such provision, but I was wondering if the exclusion proposed here by opponents was enough to shield software developers from lawsuits:

http://no.softwarepatents.org.nz/

“”10A(2): Subsection (1) does not prevent an invention that makes use of an embedded computer program from being patentable.”

“I find it a bit odd as a clarification.

“Software developers should not care about patent law, even if they develop “embedded software”, whatever that means.

In response, wrote another knowledgeable activist against software patents: “It’s not a great amendment. (I didn’t write it.) But it might still
work.

“Unclear law is a big problem in Europe because it was all written before software became commonplace, so judges can’t be sure if the author (of the EPC for example) really wanted to exclude software patents.

“In NZ the situation will be better because they have a law that allows software patents, and then the politicians said “no software patents”, and now the law is getting changed. When a judge has to interpret it, she should take into account that this law is supposed to have different effects to the previous law, and the intention was to reduce or abolish software patents.

“(That said, I haven’t been able to confirm that this is how NZ judges work.)

“The other good thing is that the petition has helped to get people organised. If the petition is a success and the politicians listen, then it means the anti-swpat camp is in control and maybe some slight changes can still be made, for this reading or for the subsequent reading. Maybe a few words can be added to the end to clarify that it means inventions controlled by an embedded computer.

“But the short answer is yes, the text does contain a loophole, but it’s too late to change it so we have to look for ways to bring the campaign back to the right direction.”

These are the words of Ciarán O’Riordan who worked with FSFE. The FSF highlights similar problems that go on in Europe and the FSFE does the same by noting: “Now the European Parliament is about to decide on setting up a single patent for Europe, known as the “unitary patent”. This is a chance to get rid of software patents. But if we don’t manage to achieve a real change in the current proposal, software patents will become even more entrenched in Europe.”

Glyn Moody says that “MEPs are back at work, and the Unitary Patent rears its misbegotten head again.”

After TomTom gave up in Europe and Microsoft had its FAT patents upheld in Germany we already see the serious consequences of software patents in Europe. Microsoft bans Motorola devices in Germany and to quote Murdoch’s press, “Google has suffered yet another defeat in its overseas patent battle with Microsoft.

“A German court ruled Thursday that a number of tablets and smartphones made by Google’s Motorola Mobility division infringe a Microsoft patent, and granted the software giant a ban on their sales in Germany. Microsoft must pay a bond of $61.4 million if it wants to see the ban implemented.”

There is more coverage of this and some background: “A court in Munich ruled on Thursday that Google-owned Motorola Mobility (MMI) must recall all the Android tablets and smartphones it has shipped in the country which infringe Apple’s “rubber band” scrolling patent, which was key in its billion-dollar lawsuit win against Samsung in the US.

“The dramatic decision, the latest in an escalating war between Apple and the smartphone and set-top box company MMI, follows earlier cases in which Apple had to disable automatic “push” delivery of email to its iPhone and iPads after MMI won a separate patent fight in Germany.”

Microsoft is getting desperate because “HP has already decided to halt development of Windows RT tablet PCs, while Dell reportedly may also back away from the segment, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.”

Moreover, Intel is not impressed by Vista 8, so despite large-scale patent battles we expect Android to carry on thriving.

Thankfully, people across Europe fight back against inane patent laws. April, a French group advocating software freedom, says: “On September, 13th, 2013, over 460 companies from all over Europe got involved to demand the improvement of the proposal for a unitary patent, following the call for action launched by April and by signing the resolution proposed with StopSoftwarePatent.eu and FFII.”

There is more from April [1, 2] and other groups or individuals who say that “a patent does NOT protect the innovator. It protects the one that filed the patent. It’s called the first-to-file doctrine and is used almost everywhere on this planet now.”

In NZ, this has been a subject of much debate. One person writes:
“Queen’s Counsel Andrew Brown has today written an article in which he confirms that the “as such” proviso added to the Patents Bill in its second reading will allow software patents to continue to be granted in New Zealand.”

Chuan-Zheng Lee has been “[r]eading lots of interesting blogs on #NZPatentsBill #swpats “embedded” vs “as such” debate” and Moody writes that “New Zealand capitulates to the #swpats lobby (see second clause) – http://bit.ly/TmW6Lp sad; #NZ will live to regret this” (background here).

There is even a whole new blog about it, called “No Software Patents in NZ“; it is protesting against software patents n NZ.

So the good news is, as was mentioned before, the public is starting to realise what happens and it gets involved. █

Patent Troll Uses Software Patents to Attack Free Software Hosting

Posted in Free/Libre Software, Law, Patents at 12:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Troll picks cows

Summary: Github comes under patent attacks as debates about US patent law intensify

THE past few weeks have been rather crazy on the patents front and as scholarly work in the area gains traction we just know that this whole debate is important; it helps determine winners and losers.

Free software took a hit when some parasites attacked Rackspace over Github. As LWN put it, “Personalweb Technologies and Level 3 Communications have filed a lawsuit [PDF] against Rackspace, alleging that Rackspace’s hosting of GitHub infringes upon a long list of software patents.”

Here are the patents in question and a response from Rackspace which calls the attackers “patent trolls”: “Rackspace has been subjected to yet another patent lawsuit by a patent troll looking for a settlement. In this case, the plaintiff is called PersonalWeb Technologies. This particular lawsuit is not much different than the others, except that it highlights why software patent litigation suppresses innovation, and why Congress and the courts need to improve the system. If it wasn’t such a serious issue we might want to laugh at the irony of it all.

“Well, PersonalWeb is adding to its ridiculous legacy by suing Rackspace as well, though as the complaint makes clear (pdf), PersonalWeb seems mighty confused about what it’s suing over.”
      –Rackspace“To explain, this suit claims that Rackspace infringes the PersonalWeb patents “by its manufacture, use, sale, importation, and/or offer for sale of the following products and services within the PersonalWeb Patent Field: Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub Code Hosting Service.” It’s apparent that the people filing the suit don’t understand the technology or the products enough to realize that Rackspace Cloud Servers and GitHub are completely different products from different companies. By now, it’s widely known that GitHub is hosted at Rackspace, but beyond that, there is no other connection between the two.”

TechDirt pokes fun at the troll: “Last year, we wrote about the somewhat random confluence of events that brought together two ex-file sharing industry execs (one associated with Kazaa and the other with Morpheus) and made them extreme patent trolls, suing a ton of internet companies under the ridiculous brand “PersonalWeb.” Well, PersonalWeb is adding to its ridiculous legacy by suing Rackspace as well, though as the complaint makes clear (pdf), PersonalWeb seems mighty confused about what it’s suing over.”

As we showed before, trolls favour software patents; it is why they are so common in the United States. Professor Lemley has an idea for closing the loophole: “In broad terms, functional claiming refers to writing patent claims that cover the broader function enabled by an invention rather than writing claims to the specific embodiment developed or contemplated by the inventor. In other words, instead of erecting a signpost that points others directly to the invention, functional claiming is akin to building a wide fence to surround the invention in an attempt to claim as much territory as possible. Lemley gives us the colorful example of the Wright brothers to illustrate both how functional claiming works and how it can cause problems/”

“As one expert noted in the Times story, patents “are supposed to be an incentive for innovation.” That’s not the way they’re working in the smartphone wars.”
      –Rob TillerThe OSI’s head Mr. Phipps says that this “paper from legal researcher suggests a fix for the software patent mess has been lurking in the statute all this time” and Red Hat’s Rob Tiller uses the recent blow to Android to make his point. To quote: “Does the Apple-Samsung case have a silver lining? For the open source community, the large damages verdict is disturbing, but at least it is drawing public attention to some of the deep problems of our patent system. This week the New York Times ran a front page story on the jury’s verdict that said, “The case underscores how dysfunctional the patent system has become.”

“The definition of “dysfunctional” is relating to “abnormal or impaired functioning.” (Merriam Webster) The word fits well here. As one expert noted in the Times story, patents “are supposed to be an incentive for innovation.” That’s not the way they’re working in the smartphone wars. Instead, entrenched players are using them to tax competitors, or even to block them from the market. To the extent patents block competitors and reduce competition, innovation is likely to suffer.”

Even the FT is displeased with US patent law. Time to end software patents; with that, many patent trolls will also be eliminated. If companies like Apple can get their way using patents alone, then we simply cannot ignore the matter. █

Nokia Might Dump Windows, Embrace Android Soon

Posted in GNU/Linux, Google, Microsoft at 11:51 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Nokia is reportedly looking at the option of kicking out the Microsoft mole and going ahead with Linux instead

Android is all over the place and even Techrights’ site articles are now being composed in Android ICS. According to reports, even Nokia might soon turn to Android and kick out the Microsoft mole. As one site put it, “Magnus Rehle, a senior partner at telecom advising firm Greenwich Consulting, tells Reuters in an interview, “Elop has not been able to attract customers and that is what counts. You can say that he has not had enough time, but he has been there for two years. Time is up.”

“The alter-ego which is Microsoft did irreparable damage to Nokia.”“He’s referring to Nokia Oyj. (HEX:NOK1V) CEO Stephen Elop, the former Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) executive who now leads the embattled Finnish phonemaker.”

If Nokia turns to Android, it will have a lot of explaining to do after feeding patent trolls, leading to antitrust complaints from Google. The alter-ego which is Microsoft did irreparable damage to Nokia. It never pays off to partner with Microsoft. Only one side (or none) is set to gain. █

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